GETTING MATCHES OFF TO A GOOD START

Within one week of match initiation, mentors, mentees and mentees’ parents/guardians should receive a welcome letter (or email) to formally reiterate program expectations and activities.

Suggested practice: Create targeted welcome letter templates for mentors and mentees. Programs working with minors should also create a welcome letter template for parents/guardians.

At the start of a mentoring relationship, both mentors and mentees (and parents/guardians, if applicable) should have a clear understanding of the various times they are expected to attend training and group events, as well as communicate with program staff members. Determining the date and format of these activities as early as possible will help ensure mentors and mentees can participate.

Suggested practice: Gather input from mentors about their availability during the application phase. View a sample mentor application that includes questions to poll mentors on their availability.

Resources to help with scheduling and project planning

Coordinating schedules between multiple volunteers and program staff can be difficult to manage. Consider using the following free tools to help with calendar management:

• Calendly (Good for setting one to one meetings)
• Doodle Poll (Good for polling a group on best dates to meet)
• Trello (Good for project planning and team collaboration)

In the first few weeks, program coordinators should encourage mentors and mentees to learn about each other. Like all relationships, it takes time to develop trust. Some mentees may be more willing to open up and share their personal history, hopes, and dreams, but others may need a bit more time. Although your program may have specific goals for matches, the priority for the first few weeks is for mentors and mentees to get to know each other and build trust.

The following resources and activities can help mentors and mentees connect at the start of their relationship:

• “I Am” Poem
• “I Am From” Poem
• 115 Conversation Starters
• 10 Ways to Connect
• 5 Five Ways Mentors and Mentees Can Bring Out the Best in Each Other
• 100 Questions to Ask your Mentor and Mentee
• 5 Stages of Mentor-Mentee Relationship Development
• How to Catch and Keep a Quality Mentor
• How to Build a Great Relationship with a Mentor

For program coordinators, monitoring connectivity in the first few weeks can be both time-consuming and difficult to manage. To help reinforce expectations and set boundaries, consider creating an accountability form for mentors and mentees to complete within the first two weeks of being paired. This form should invite the mentor and mentee to articulate the goals of the match and outline how they plan to interact with each other.

Suggested practice: Create and share an accountability form for mentors and mentees to fill out together during the first few weeks of their relationship.

Once the mentor and mentee have spent some time getting to know each other, an important next step is to identify measurable, age-appropriate goals for the mentee. Goal setting helps matches create accountability between one another.

Goal setting might be a new concept for a mentee, so before inviting mentors to discuss goals with mentees, program staff members may want to lead a goal-setting workshop to orient mentees to this process. It is suggested that program coordinators deliver optional workshops to help mentees think about their goals before working with a mentor.

Take a moment to review a Sample Goal Setting Workshop Overview

Read more about mentee goal setting:

• “Strategies for Setting and Working on Mentee Goals”
• “Youth Goal Setting” (Community Toolbox)
• “Ongoing Training for Mentors: Goal Setting With Your Mentee” (Pages 47–56)

 
Review sample goal-setting templates:

• “Example: Completed Action Plan Form — Goal Setting” (Community Toolbox)
• “Goal Setting Worksheet” (adapted from a resource used in Argonne National Laboratory’s mentoring program)

During the first few months of a youth-mentoring relationship, there are a lot of match-support activities to coordinate. Documenting all the specific support activities and points of contact in the early months can help program staff members stay organized.

Suggested practice: Create a detailed match-support timeline that documents when important activities should take place in the early stages of the mentoring relationship.

• “Starting Relationships Right: Topics and Questions to Align Participant Expectations in Youth Mentoring Programs”
• “Staffing Calculator for Match Support”
• “Strategies for Setting and Working on Mentee Goals”